Kate Caterina: A Novel - Softcover

Riviere, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802139736 ISBN 13: 9780802139733

Publisher: Grove Press, 2003

Synopsis

Chosen as Book of the Year in London by both the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, Kate Caterina is a passionate love story and a heartbreaking saga of a family torn apart by war, situated against a canvas of Italy during World War II. Brilliantly linking the atmosphere of war-torn Europe and a palpable love for Italy and its people, Riviere tells the story of Kate Fenn, a great English beauty who marries a young left-wing Italian doctor and moves to Tuscany, where she relishes the countryside splendor and the strong ties her new family has. She changes her name to Kate Caterina to unite her internationally conflicted sides, but soon finds herself isolated inside Nazi-Fascist Europe with a family completely torn apart by politics. Captivating from the first pages to the unforgettable end, Kate Caterina is the story of a family and a nation traumatized, of loyalty and betrayal, and of Caterina's effort to retain an inner freedom in a country at war. "A masterpiece of a tour through Mussolini's Italy." -- Scott Bernard Nelson, The Boston Globe "Kate Caterina belongs in the great tradition of the European novel." -- The Sunday Telegraph "[The] central characterizations ... diverse places of the heart and mind ... is strong enough to make this novel a remarkable achievement." -- The Spectator

About this title

Review

William Riviere's novel is a tale of survival in Italy under a fascist regime following the civil unrest of the Second World War. Through Kate Caterina, the eponymous heroine, Riviere tries to paint the painful and confusing images of war, made all the more blurred by her conflicting loyalties--a brother fighting for the Allies, a brother-in-law as a member of the Axis powers' army and a husband imprisoned for anti-fascist political sympathies. However, the story feels slight and disappointing, and it is not until the penultimate chapter that genuine emotion breaks through and some of the characters come briefly alive.

The casual narrative style that permeates the book, which concentrates on the thoughts of Caterina and her Italian in-laws, suggests that Caterina's experience of war is quite slight and selfish. Her confused and histrionic ramblings take centre stage, while her efforts to help prisoners of war and Italian runaways is set in the outer wings of the text. Caterina's thoughts and speeches are often left unfinished, so that the reader is left guessing as to what she really wants to say. From descriptions of Caterina as "muddle-headed" and with "the harbour of her brainpan ... connected to all the waters of the world...", it seems that this ambiguity is intentional. But it is ultimately frustrating and dissatisfying. Caterina is a character who never takes solid form, becoming a garbled stereotype of "everywoman", with hysterical desires and fears.

As an imagined "vox pop" on the fears of the liberal intelligentsia in Italy during the Second World War (and sometimes of the fascist gentry and the ordinary working class), Kate Caterina is worthwhile. Riviere attempts to use his historical omniscience to give the story some sort of fateful horror, while also trying to get into the heads of his characters as if in the 1940s, but he does not offer enough in the way of moving characterisation and a sympathetic plot to make a memorable story. --Olivia Dickinson

Review

A compelling psychological drama...deeply moving...a remarkable achievement' (Frank Egerton, Spectator)

I was amazed that his last novel, ECHOES OF WAR, won no prizes...I shall not only be amazed, but shocked, disgusted, and dismayed if KATE CATERINA is no more successful...It's a novel to lose yourself in; and when you have done so, you will find you have deepened your knowledge of other people, and perhaps of yourself. Read it and revel in it and be moved by it (Allan Massie, Scotsman)

There have been books about families torn apart in England and Germany but few, if any, about the Italian connection...this novel, coming on the back of the highly acclaimed ECHOES OF WAR, should help establish him as one of our most perceptive and engaging writers' (Martin Barsby, Eastern Daily Press)

Caterina's chameleon personality is absorbing...The intense, closed world that the author has created holds wider truths. His writing is infused with a love of Italy and its people, but he unambiguously exposes the complicity of many ordinary people with Mussolini's regime (Ben Sheppard, Daily Express)

an engrossing novel ... much of it carries powerful emotional force; the narrative has great pace and positively bounds along, carrying the reader in its wake; the plotting never seems artificial; and the climax .. is both surprising, shocking and affecting...My feeling is that a great many people will enjoy his novel hugely - and that it would make a superb film (David McLaurin, The Tablet)

an ambitious and absorbing project. (Elizabeth Buchan, The Times)

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802139736
• ISBN 13: 9780802139733
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384